Aggressive Selfishness

I have started to reengage with twitter/facebook since returning from holiday. I must admit that I want to be more thoughtful in the time I give to blogging...don't want to rob my work. So I'll try to be brief.

I'm so disappointed with the state of this country right now. In particular, I am disappointed people are simply rolling over and allowing MPs to try and take a lead on 'fixing' the brokenness.

I was reading James 3 this morning:

"For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder"
(James 3:16)

As I re-read sermon notes from a series on James I heard two years ago by Jonathan Lamb, I came across a line he'd said, which referred to the 'aggressive selfishness' our children see around us. Mindful of all that's happened, I can't help feeling that in so many ways we are reaping what we've sown.

And the envious ambition is everywhere:

MPs seek to line their own nests...and I don't care a jot if they were "operating within the rules"...they were fundamentally selfish, seeking to create their very own safe and comfortable existence. Some MPs are noble and full of integrity...but what we saw was very VERY few who had not claimed unfairly.

Our Bankers and Financiers seek such gargantuan rewards, such enormous bonuses, such inflated salaries as to make me blush. (Okay...so do footballers...but they have a very simple conundrum...beat the opposition, stay fit, don't sleep with your best mates wife....) Bankers are guilty of envy and selfish ambition because of the risks they were prepared to take.

Then there's the press - the guardians of truth - the exposers of falsehoods. Have they led by example? No. Again...some are deeply honest, but what concerns me is the degree to which it is those at the top, who allow bad men and women to do bad things. And why? Why might media barons be so quick to turn a blind eye? For profit - surely that is the truth, and our spirits know it. Some journalism is fact finding, but papers are sold to make profit. Financial gain...

And this sense of personal financial gain is so often why the police themselves, our law enforcers, can agree to take back-handers, bungs, etc.

But I wonder, those of us who've watched on. Did our MPs, our Bankers, the Press, etc...did they have serious consequences to face? Not really no. MPs largely kept their jobs, some not even having to make statements to the House of Commons; Bankers, well the Government decided to bail them out, making me and you liable for their excesses and risk taking; the Police, the Press...no there will always be bent coppers, and a devious press.

So is it...really...any wonder that our Young People should behave as they've done; these Young People who have witnessed this aggressive selfishness with no consequences?

Now, please don't get me wrong. The looting, stealing, burning, (apparently) raping, and rioting are despicable actions.

But how dare, how VERY dare our leaders sit in judgment on a generation that is, largely doing what it has seen others do around it: acting out of selfish ambition with no fear of consequence.

James describes envy and selfish ambition as a form of wisdom, but not from God. This wisdom is "earthly, unspiritual, of the devil" (James 3:15). Or to put it plainer, of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Now, I don't want to try and seek some moral high ground. I am just as guilty of selfish ambition, and of envying other people's possessions and homes. But I daily commit to live in the power of the Spirit, which is a gift from God as a consequence of my being 'in Christ'. And the Spirit wants me to grow a totally different type of fruit:
- Peace-loving
- Considerate
- Submissive
- Merciful
- Fruitful (a reference perhaps to the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22ff.) or of being effective in ministry
- Impartial
- Sincere - not a hypocrite. (Taken from James 3: 17)

These, surely, are precisely the types of attitudes and behaviours we want to see on the streets and in the communities around our country? But the truth is, as the Bible testifies, that these cannot be generated, or at least sustained, by good-will alone. A government think tank will not enable us to live like this. We are sadly at the mercy of Satan and his attempts to destroy us, the world and it's value-system of money, sex, and power, and then our own weakness and fraility that renders us impotent to face down these challenges...

I am looking for God's people to stand up and very simply say: "society is broken, and that's because we are ALL broken. There is noone who can save himself, or us. Noone, but Jesus that is. Let me tell you about him?"

To conclude (and I am sorry for ranting and probably saying some things people will deeply disagree with) I have felt myself singing the words to this song as a response this last week. This is my prayer as we step out in faith:

Restore, O Lord
The honour of Your name
In works of sovereign power
Come shake the earth again
That men may see
And come with reverent fear
To the living God
Whose kingdom shall outlast the years

Restore, O Lord
In all the earth Your fame
And in our time revive
The church that bears Your name
And in Your anger
Lord, remember mercy
O living God
Whose mercy shall outlast the years

Bend us, O Lord
Where we are hard and cold
In Your refiner's fire
Come purify the gold
Though suffering comes
And evil crouches near
Still our living God
Is reigning, He is reigning here

Restore, O Lord
The honour of Your name
In works of sovereign power
Come shake the earth again
That men may see
And come with reverent fear
To the living God
Whose kingdom shall outlast the years

Graham Kendrick & Chris Rollinson
© 1981 Kingsways Thankyou Music